Anisotropic semblance analysis and NMO corrections for long-offset data

Abstract

Sedimentary rocks can be regarded as transversely isotropic (TI) media. P-wave reflections from horizontal reflectors in transversely isotropic media have non-hyperbolic moveout. One difficulty in seismic processing is how to flatten such reflection events for long-offset data. For a multi-layered model, the reflection moveout formula is usually expressed as a Taylor series with higher order terms ignored. Alkhalifah and Tsvankin (1995) developed a three-term Taylor-series formula to calculate reflection travel times from a horizontal reflector in TI media with a vertical symmetry axis (VTI). Using this formula, NMO correction works well for short spread lengths, but not so well for long spreads. Zhang and Uren (2001a, b) developed an approximate explicit analytical P-wave ray velocity function for transversely isotropic (TI) media. From this ray velocity function, a reflection traveltime formula for a horizontal reflector in TI media was derived. This formula can be used for anisotropic NMO correction. It works well for both large offsets and small offsets. In order to obtain the unknown parameters required for seismic processing, a 3D-semblance analysis technique has been developed. We tested this method on numerical data from TI models with a single horizontal reflector and from multiple horizontal reflector models. The method was also tested on an isotropic model with multiple horizontal reflectors. The results show that the events can be completely flattened even for very large offsets, and that both multi-layered TI and isotropic models may appear to be anisotropic.